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14 February 2013

January 2013 Notes on Teleconference with Carol P. Christ

Note from the January
16, 2013 Teleconference with Carol P. Christ

WATER thanks Carol P. Christ for her insightful presentation
and her lifelong contribution to the field of feminist studies in religion. We
look forward to her book, tentatively entitled Goddess and God after Feminism: Body, Nature, and Power,
co-authored with Judith Plaskow. Following are notes on her recent
teleconference remarks as well as her responses to questions and discussion.

Carol and Judith Plaskow are longtime colleagues who have collaborated
on significant anthologies in feminist work in religion. This time they are
trying to capture and expand on their conversations about the nature of the Goddess
or God. They hold different views of divine power and found that no amount of
rational argument could convince either of them to change her opinion. Their
new work involves more than rational discourse and includes autobiography and
dialogue about personal and philosophical differences. In the opening chapters
they describe early experiences that shaped their views of God.

Carol grew up in California with her mother’s and father’s extended
families, her mother, her father, and two brothers. Her grandmothers were Roman
Catholic and Christian Scientist, and she was raised Protestant. Her sense of
the divine included the idea that God is love, connection to the Blessed Mother,
the assumption of health, and connection to nature. Her studies with (the
early) Michael Novak taught her that theology should address existential
questions and help us make sense of our lives. She took from all of this that the earth is
our home and that is nature full of wonder, that life in the body is good, and
that the love of God and the Blessed Mother are always with us.

She describes the impact of the love she felt in her early
years from her grandmothers and her mother. At the time of her mother’s death,
she felt a powerful—revelatory—presence of love. This experience opened her to
the love of friends and animals, nature and family, and helped her to stop
pining for a single significant other.She
affirms that the Goddess is love—that has nothing to do with war, violence, or
domination—and embraces the whole world.

Carol refers to the world as the body of the Goddess. She
sees the Goddess as intelligent, embodied love that is the ground of all being,
borrowing from Paul Tillich. With process theologian Charles Hartshorne, she
affirms divine presence in the world. She says that panentheism expresses her
sense that the Goddess is in but more than the world. She calls divine power
not a power to coerce or control but a power to love, understand, persuade, and
inspire. The difference between the Goddess and us is that while we sometimes
love She always loves, and while we sometimes understand, She always understands.

Process philosophy provides Carol with a framework and
foundation for thinking about change, relationship, and the interdependence of
the web of life. The divinity is not an exception to these principles but the
main exemplar of them. Evil in the world is not created by the divine power, but
by human beings. We are responsible to repair the world. The divine power, the
Goddess, promises to be with us all the way, and that, Carol says, makes all
the difference.

1. The first question was whether God is personal and
whether we need anthropomorphic images.Carol
agrees with Marcia Falk that we need all kinds of images of the divine,
including those from nature like wind. Where she differs with Judith Plaskow is
whether the divine power is impersonal or personal. Judith believes that the
divine power is impersonal while Carol believes it is a personal presence that
cares about human and other than human lives.

2. In response to a question about community, Carol said
that it is important to have a community to share spirituality and spiritual
questions. She described her own kind of “dark night of the soul” when nothing
made sense, when she did not have words for certain experiences, or confidence
that anyone else would understand if she could muster the words. When she found
the “courage to see” (Mary Daly "The Courage to See." The Christian Century 88 (Sept 22,
1971): 1108-1111), things that felt most vulnerable and painful were affirmed
by other women as part of their experiences as well. She mentioned the powerful
phrase of Nelle Morton, “hearing each other into speech.” (The Journey is Home, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1985, pp. 202-210)

Carol said that it is hard to go against conventional religions; it is a big
risk to speak out against traditional Christianity and still want to be a
theologian in an academic world where Christian tradition has so much power. Carol
quoted Mary E. Hunt, who said to Carol, “We’ve made the academy safe for women
who are safer than we are.”

3. One participant honored Carol’s “brilliance and courage.”
She asked Carol about the field of women in religion today. Carol described her
disappointment. She said she had believed in the 1970s that women were “all in
it together” in our quest to transform or find alternatives to patriarchal
religion. But she has found that in the university/seminary system telling the
truth about our lives and discussing it in rational way is not rewarded.
(Editor’s note: Some would say punished!)Carol said that she was not able to teach women and religion at an advanced
level at San Jose State University, and that she was not offered a job at an
institution where she could continue to develop the field with graduate
students. California Institute of
Integral Studies (CIIS), where she is an adjunct
teaching online graduate courses, is one of the few institutions with a Women’s
Spirituality program that welcomes students and faculty whose interests are not
tied to traditional patriarchal religions.

She also mentioned that she once heard a “feminist” scholar advise
women students to do feminist work but not to acknowledge the word feminism or any
relationship to methods created by feminist foremothers. She found this advice
horrifying. With reference to the insight of writers like bell hooks and Paulo
Freire, Carol affirmed writing in ways other people can understand and avoiding
academic jargon as import aspects of feminist work in religion.

4. In response to another question, Carol talked about her
work with the Green Party in Greece. She described her concern for ecology, her
interest in bird watching, and her reading of Charles Hartshorne’s “Do Birds Love
to Sing,” which confirmed her feeling humans are not only the species with the capacity
to enjoy life. Lesbos, where she lives, is a stopping off point for migratory
birds. Its wetlands are increasingly degraded. So Carol got involved in activism
to save the wetlands. She met Michael Bakas of the Green Party (which was founded
by Petra Kelly) who asked her to run for office in regional and national
elections in Lesbos. She was pleased to discover that the Green party
principles of sustainability, non-violence (in Greek, no violence), social
justice, and participatory democracy expressed her own beliefs.

She spoke of the use of social media outside of academy,
including FeminismandReligion.com
where she publishes often. She also teaches online.

5. Another participant asked about Carol’s experiences of rituals.
Carol replied that ritual is extremely important to her even though she does
not belong to an on-going ritual group. She practices ritual during the four
weeks of the year when she leads the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete (www.goddessariadne.org). Years ago,
she started a ritual group in California. She admires the work of Z Budapest,
Starhawk, and others. However, she is less interested in aspects of ”Wiccan”
practice than she once was—especially since discovering that some practices
(e.g., invocations to guardians of the watchtowers, use of knives, etc.) were
taken from the Masons or other groups that are not feminist. Carol affirms
building altars, pouring libations, the simple sharing of gratitude, acknowledging
that we did not come from ourselves but live in interdependence with one another.
She likes the song by Faith
Rogow, “As we bless the source of life so are we blessed.”

6. A Buddhist colleague asked Carol whether she was
influenced by Buddhist teachers since so many of Carol’s views seem compatible
with Buddhism. Carol said she is “a kind of Buddhist” in that she does not
believe that the world revolves around herself (her ego). But she is not a
non-dualist but rather a process thinker who affirms that we are part of the whole
and in relationship with each other as individuals. She sees the divine power
as a personal loving presence. To quote Carol, “I do not believe that I am God
or God is I. I believe I am much less than [God], much more finite than [God].”

7. In response to an inquiry about her sense that we are all
related in the web of life, Carol suggested we could recognize that such relationships
are very concrete. Those with ancestry from the Middle East, Europe, Australia,
and Asia are related to Africans who left Africa only about 50,000 years ago.
All Europeans carry mitochondrial DNA from only a dozen or so ancestral mothers.

Carol closed by saying that unlike some people who do not
want life to end when they die, she has no need for heaven or reincarnation.
She feels that her life will end, and she feels fine with that. Ancient
cultures, she said, focused on the continuity of communities and of life, not the
continuation of individual lives. She believes that we dissolve into earth
leaving memories of our lives behind.She feels no need for individual survival; rather, she is grateful to
have been given life.

WATER is grateful for Carol P. Christ’s major contribution
to the field of women in religion. We look forward to the book that she and
Judith Plaskow are writing and wish them well on its completion.